Jonathan Swift : A Misanthrope or

Hater of Mankind in The Gulliver’s

Travels
“I hate and detest that animal called man…” This is a portion of a sentence from
a letter of the world famous satirist Jonathan Swift to Alexander Pope.“The
Gulliver’s Travels” is Swift’s masterpiece, a universal satire satirizing the mankind
as a whole. However, Book I of this satire is actually directed to the political
circumstances and corruption of the then England. Yet, it is also applicable to
general tendency of the political leaders of other countries alike. Again, the Book
II shows the abuse of power. But Swift most violently attacks the human being and
shows his utter hatred towards the whole mankind in the Book IV. For this reason,
Swift is called a misanthrope, a hater of mankind. Now let us evaluate the point
giving references from the text and comments of different critics.

At the very first travel, Gulliver, Swift’s mouthpiece, appears to such a land
where lives an unbelievable ‘human creature not more than six inches high’ .
Actually, Swift’s this presentation of an impossible physical smallness of the
human race is desired to show the possible mental smallness.

At the second book of the travels, Swift introduces us with a

dangerous ‘rope-dance’ among the political competitors, which may cause their
serious physical injury, in performing their ‘dexterity and magnificence’ in front of
the king to achieve his favour. Even, “Flimnap would have infallibly broke his
neck if one of the King’s cushions that actually lay on the ground had not
weakened his fall.” This symbolical story ironically means Walpol’s (Flimnap’s)
keeping his power ok by using one of the King’s mistresses (King’s cushions),
with whom he had an illegal relationship. Though it seems a personal attack, it
actually aims at the common human tendency to keep power by unfair means.

The human beings have an instinct to make quarrel and war. The long war
between the ‘Lilliputians’and the ‘Blefuscus’ on a trivial issue for a long time
proves their love for war. They continue the war for many years on the point that
which end of an egg to break, larger or smaller end.

Swift’s mouthpiece of misanthropy now is the king of Brobdingnags who

having heard an account of Gulliver’s native people throws a pungent attack on the
whole mankind-

“I can not but conclude the bulk of your natives, to be the most pernicious race of
little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the
earth.”

Swift’s most serious attack on mankind lies in the fourth book, A Voyage to
the Country of the Houyhnhnms, where he introduces us with two sorts of
inhabitants- Yahoos or monkeys, representing mankind and Houyhnhnms,
representing horses. But the most objectionable thing is that Yahoos have been
shown to be deformed, ugly and inferior in both physical and mental make-up,
while the Houyhnhnms are‘endued with a proportionable degree of
reason’ and ‘orderly and rational, acute and judicious’ . The
Houyhnhnms are ‘the Perfection of Nature’ while “the yahoos … were observed
to be the most unteachable of all brutes”

“Part IV of Gulliver’s Travels describes man as ‘a lump of deformity and disease

both in body and mind, smitten with pride’.”

Swift has so much hatred towards mankind that he makes Gulliver tell-

“I expressed my uneasiness at his giving me so often the appellation of Yahoo, an

odious animal, for which a had so utter an hatred.”

Gulliver having described to the master Houyhnhnm of how the human

being or Yahoos of his country travel upon the seas by ships, the master
Houyhnhnm gets surprised to hear such a thing. Gulliver says-
“He asked me who made the ship, and how it was possible to that the Houyhnhnms
of my country would have it to the management of brutes.”

Can any human being bear such a pungent attack on the whole human being as
‘brutes’?

Gulliver did not, any time, want to disclose his body in front of the
Houyhnhnms for he always wanted to distinguish himself ‘as much as possible
from the cursed race of Yahoo’. But once the secret of his dress is discovered and
he is asked to put off his dresses in front of them. But he feels ashamed ‘ to expose
those parts that nature taught us to conceal’. However , the master surprises in not
wanting to disclose the dress.

Hence, the use of the phrase ‘the cursed race of Yahoo’ and the incident
demand a religious interpretation:

According to the ‘Doctrine of Original Sin’ of St. Augustine, who has a great
influence on Christianity, human being is originally of sinful nature sharing the sin
of Adam and Eve who were ‘cursed’ and expelled from the garden of Eden. Again
Adam and Eve felt ashamed of their nakedness in front of God after experience of
having the forbidden fruit. Same is the case of Gulliver in front of the Master
Houyhnhnm after his ‘original’ state having been discovered. But the Yahoos of
the land actually represent the pre-fallen or innocent state of mankind. So they do
not have any shame of nakedness.

Therefore, from the theological point of view, this can not have any satirical
purpose, but just a religious interpretation. But Swift’s misanthropy is expressed in
his own words in a letter to Pope (Sep. 29, 1728) after finishing the travels. Swift
says-

“I have ever hated all Nations professions and Communitys and all my love is
towards individuals …… I hate and detest that animal called man , although I
heartily love John, Peter , Thomas.”

That is, he hates the ‘cursed’ race of ‘man of original sin’, but loves some
individuals. But, don’t Peter, John and Thomas bear the original sin? ... So Swift is
here self-contradictory. Actually his “chief end … is to vex the world rather than to
divert it”. “Upon this great foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my
travels is erected”, Swift himself says.

Swift’s misanthropy reaches the climax when Gulliver says,

“I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me…. Yet the smell of a
Yahoo continuing very offensive, I always keep my nose stopped with rue,
lavender, or tobacco leaves. “

He has no anti-climax of his misanthropy. Rather he speaks against human pride,

“When I behold a lump of deformity and disease both in body and mind, smitten
with pride, it immediately breaks all the measures of my patience.”

But is Swift without pride? - ‘No’ can be the appropriate answer according to
Swift’s own letter to Charles ford (Jan 19th, 1724). In that letter, he feels proud of
his ‘Abilityes’. Moreover, having corrected his sins by keeping company with
Houyhnhnms, now Gulliver tries to keep himself aloof from the ‘cursed’ race of
Yahoos, i.e. from mankind. But as far as the Doctrine of Original Sin is concerned,
how can he, being a descendant of Adam and Eve, be apart from the basic fallen
nature of human being? … Therefore, Swift himself is the irony of his treatment,
and he is completely a misanthrope.

However from the book I to the book IV of this travel story, we can draw a
progress in the religious perspective. In the book I, Gulliver discharged his urine to
extinguish the fire and left his stool without any shame. It became possible for he
was in the state of innocence. But in the book IV, he feels very much ashamed to
disclose his dresses for he is now in the experienced stage. Gulliver in the first
book was a superior man but now inferior. The first was pre-fallen state of Adam
and Eve while the fourth is post-fallen.

Swift so violently ‘vexed’ the world that different critics from his own time
the 18th century to the 20thcentury bitterly criticized him. Even his defenders could
not but consider the 4th book to be most objectionable.
 Among the 18th century critics, there was Earl of Orrey, Swift’s earliest
biographer, who says,

“no man [was] better acquainted [than Swift] with human nature, both in the
highest’ and in the lowest scenes of life.” (p. 338)*

Yet he considers Swift’s misanthropy in book IV ‘intolerable’ and says “voyage to

the Houyhnhnms is a real insult upon mankind” (p. 190)** Another was Partrick
Delany calling the book IV to be ‘moral deformity’, ‘defiled imagination’. Thus,
the 18th century critics, taking a high moral line, considers that Swift’s misanthropy
led him to write ‘a monostrous fiction’ which was actually ‘an artistic failure’.

Of the 19th century commentators who were less harsh than the 18 th century
commentators, Gosse was the harshest. He uses some phrases indicating Swift’s
tendency, Swift himself and his book- ‘the horrible satisfaction of disease’ , a
brain ‘not wholly under control’ and ‘the horrible foulness’. The softest critic of
this century was W. E. H. Lecky who tries to answer Gosse in a differet angel. He
sees Swifts misanthropy as a constitutional melancholy “mainly due to a physical
malady which had long acted upon his brain”. But this answer is not suitable to us
for Swift survived for a long time even after writing this book. However,
Thackeray advised us not to read the book. Walter Scott in his edition of Swift’s
Works (1814), says “the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state” (1883 ed., I, 315)

However, the 20th century psychoanalysts have found an attractive subject for
their study in Swift as well as Gulliver and tried to explain in terms of neuroses
and complexes. The following quotation can be quoted from the ‘Psychoanalytic
Review of 1842’ –

“It furnishes abundant evidence of the neurotic makeup of the author and discloses
in him a number of perverse trends indicative of fixation at the anal sadistic stage
of libidinal development. Most conspicuous among those perverse trends is that of
coprophilia, although the work furnishes evidence of numerous other related
neurotic characteristics accompanying the general picture of psychosexual
infantilism and emotional immaturity.”
 Now, from the above discussion it must be said that Jonathan Swift is
completely a misanthrope for he has expressed his utter hatred towards the whole
mankind in his writing as well as in his letters to his acquaintances. However, he
has been so bitterly criticized that we sometimes feel pity for him.